Deus Ex Machina

[Serpentis]

Michael was sitting by a console in one of the sublevel data storage rooms, he had been working on the catagorizement of most of the data concerning hourses, it was something that usualy acolytes would do, but these sections where often closed of for any but the priests or arch priests.

This level had not been active for over a hundred cycles, with the exception of robot workers, who kept the place tidy, alltough they werent allowed to touch anything. Michael was sitting and looking at a section about Liberty economics, trying to input commands into the console, of where this section belongs in the database, he had been at it for 6 straight hours.

He began to become tired, his eyes lacking focus and his mind drfting away to fantasies off battles in space between huge fleets of ships, cannons ripping it's oponents shields and hull to shred, how the fleet he was with began to crumple the oposition and defeat them with little to no losses. He smiles, he had not thought about this fantasy for years.

A crack, something moves, Michael jumped of his chair, landing on the metal floor with a bang, he lit his wrist light and began to point it towards the area where the sound came from, he as he lit up the area ahead grasped his side arm, a low yeild laser pistol, enough to kill animals or burn a human, but not enough to damage a robot, if it now was a robot. High unlikely, you see all robots created by the Enclave had one protocol, that exists without it's knowledge. It may never harm a member of the Enclave, since 98% of the robots in the Enclave have a life of it's own, with a personality, and would never from the begining think of hurting another Enclave member, it would seam, unnescesary, but if anything have been proved in the past, is that precautions should always be placed.

Anyhow, back to the story, Michael lit his light towards a series of alcoves, holding ancient storage devices, databases and the like. All of which where turned of or damaged. Except one..

It glowed with an eerie blue light, and hummed softly, it looked from a distance like a old database console, basic in it's design, like a metal box, but with displays, buttons and storage slots in it's front it seamed to be powered from within the device, rather then the facility itself.

Michael was a curious man, which have in the past cost him quite alot, sneaking into meetings he isnt supposed to listen to where not uncommon, he walked slowly towards the machine. It made no new sounds or even switched light setting. Not that it would, it was just a old piece of machinery... But something nagged Michael, in the back of his mind a warning mechanism activated, he felt as if he should just leave. But he couldnt, he wanted, no needed to know what the hell it was, and why just that thing was operating, while all of it's siblings (machines created in the design as the mentioned machine) where turned off.

Michael where now only a feet away, he could see that one of the lit up screens contained numerals flashing across it's surface, strange behavior for a database machine, he took a closer look, along it's front it had several devices attached to it, claws, metal pipes running across it's surface, not to mention cables and control panels, displays and.. A weird set of petruding devices, they almost looked like something one would look into, if one would like to, perhaps it was somekind of mental projector, Michael thought to himself.

He started to look at the incription on the top of the front, it read;

"Deus Ex Machina"

He blinked, "What in the.." he said out loud.

He looked into the petruding eye holes, blinked twice, nothing, only darkness, perhaps it was off then anyway, he looked into it again, and this time, he did see something, at first it felt as if his eyes where on fire, he could not close them, then he felt something grabbing his arms and legs, holding him where he stood, then a hand like device took a hold of the back of his head and forced him to continue looking down, a blinding green light, searing trough his entire being, he began to feel his insides burning, he was sure he was going to die, then he saw numbers, letters, weird hyroglyphs amongst other strange symbols, then he saw, a control, or programming code, it began to repeat itself.

That's when he felt how his skin where broken, but small needles, and he felt as something poured into his veins, filling them, he could feel his heart pump faster, and also how the back of his head began to hurt, how something where cutting in it, he felt metal apendixes touching his exposed neck, the programming code contiinues to flash across his eyes, he couldnt do anything, and all he was thinking about was his sister, then a compelling sensation went trough his mind.. <<Obey the directive>>

Darkness..

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